BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Three Alabama men are among 30 people from around the nation profiled in a report released Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center on what the group characterizes as key leaders of radical right groups.

"Their divisive propaganda, which is being embraced by opportunistic politicians and pundits and exploited for partisan gain, is doing real damage to our country," Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Montgomery-based center and editor of the new report, said in a prepared statement. . .

The Alabama men highlighted in the report are Michael Vanderboegh of Pinson, described by the report as a "Patriot leader;" Michael Hill of Killen, with League of the South, described as a neo-Confederate group; and Timothy Turner of Ozark, described as being with the Sovereign Citizens Movement. . .

Vanderboegh disputed the center's characterization of him. "The so-called 'Patriot Movement' is a false construction of the SPLC to be able to conflate large numbers of dissimilar and even opposing philosophies for the purposes of creating fundraising bogeymen to scare their donors," he wrote in an email. He described himself as a long-time leader of the constitutional militia movement.

Conducting a training class in communications and sensors, getting ready to work the border, 2005.

The center's profile on Vanderboegh states he dislikes immigrants. "I worked the border in October 2005 in support of the Minutemen," Vanderboegh wrote. "I do not 'dislike' immigrants nor have I ever written such ... I did oppose the Bush administration's failure to enforce the immigration laws of this country as a direct threat to the rule of law."

The profile on him states that in 2010, after Congress passed President Obama's health care reform bill, Vanderboegh used his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog to urge opponents to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices nationwide. Bricks were thrown through several offices around the nation.

"Specifically I called for the breaking of local Democrat Party headquarters windows," Vanderboegh wrote. "Political vandalism to make a point is a fine old American tradition, going back to original Sons of Liberty."

The report also notes the arrests in November of four men, ranging in age from their 50s to 70s, with a Georgia militia charged with allegedly planning attacks against government officials and buildings. The planned attacks were inspired, in part, by an online novel published by Vanderboegh, according to news reports and the center's report.

"Blaming me for the 'Georgia Geriatric Militia' is like blaming Tom Clancy for September 11," Vanderboegh said.

One professor who studied and wrote a book on the growth of militia groups in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing questioned the tone of the center's report.

"Dispassionate unbiased analysis it is not," said Robert Churchill, associate professor of history at the University of Hartford, Conn., who wrote "To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement."

Churchill wrote in an email that he believes the center takes a few cheap shots at Vanderboegh, including the attempted link to the Georgia militia case and questioning Vanderboegh's claims that he was a moderate who denounced neo-Nazis. "Vanderboegh was in fact a very important anti-racist voice within the militia movement in the 1990s," Churchill wrote.

Here's some quotes responding to the SPLC screed that didn't make it into the paper:

As to the "posturing as a civic improver by leading attacks on a botched gun investigation," they are referring to the fact that I broke the "Fast and Furious" scandal story in December, 2010, verifying whistleblower accounts through my own sources within the ATF. I, along with my fellow gun rights blogger David Codrea, was subsequently responsible for linking up whistleblowers like ATF agent John Dodson first with Senator Sessions' office and then with Senator Grassleys'. The SPLC, which has long had a symbiotic relationship with ATF (they defended ATF during the racist Good O' Boys Roundup scandal) is likely taking this opportunity to express their dislike of my criticism of their gravy train. (Ask SPLC how much they make from Federal law enforcement contracts providing "extremist training" to federal and state LE agencies. They will not tell you.)

SPLC: "In that role, he has been regularly consulted as an expert by Fox News, which hasn’t bothered to mention his background as a militia leader or instigator of criminal brick-throwing attacks."

My reply: In my year and a half of working the Fast and Furious scandal, I have been interviewed by William LaJuennesse of FOX exactly twice. If that constitutes "regular" it is a definition contrary to the one in Webster's. . .

SPLC: "That would be officials of the very same government, as it turns out, that sends Mike Vanderboegh, each and every month, a disability check for $1,300."

My reply: Accurate as far as it goes. The collectivists such as SPLC, MSNBC and others have made much of the fact that I am on SS disability for this princely sum. My doctor suggested I apply after I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. It was immediately granted without reference to any lawyer. What really galls these professional liars for money is either (a) that I am getting some of the forty plus years that I paid into Social Security back while they understand that they'll never draw theirs, (b) more likely, they understand the ancient guerrilla warrior logistics tactic of living off the substance of the enemy.

My conclusion to the email: SPLC gets by with their years of lies, conflations and half-truths simply because you in the media never look under their skirts. They have been denounced by ex-employees (see Montgomery Advertiser series in the 1990s, "Marketing the Militias"); by activists on the left who despise them more than I do; by old civil rights foot soldiers who sneer that Dees is a "civil rights pimp" who started out defending Klansmen and then saw where the money was; by Dees ex-partner, the founder of Habitat for Humanity and by non-partisan, non-profit watchdog groups.

Yet they get by with ad hominem attacks such as the sneer just dissected because you in the press view them as "extremist experts." One might as well write a history of the Jews in Spain by relying solely upon the memoirs of Cardinal Francisco Jimenez, the Grand Inquisitor.

What a crock of feces , maybe if you had a personal friend and benefactor who once bombed federal offices,A REAL TERRORIST! maybe he could propel YOU to the Whitehouse someday!,or ghost write book`s for you.

I am so proud of you for making the top of the list. Many have tried, not all succeed! Now that your on the top, do you get a free trip to Disney World? Again, let me congratulate you on a remarkable achievement and I sincerely hope that all your future endeavors meet with the same level of success!!!

My Blog List

Advice on child rearing from my son.

Everyone should grow up with simulated equipment from a heavy weapons platoon. It gives you a more well rounded education and an appreciation for the finer things in life. -- Sergeant Matthew Vanderboegh, United States Army.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.